ERICA AT THE BBG

Each morning of my internship I would wake up around 4:30 when roosters that lived outside my host family’s home began to crow. My host mom didn’t get up too much later to begin cooking breakfast and packing lunches for her 9 children and me. By 6:15, I had found a place to sit in the overcrowded the staff van and made the bumpy ride to the Belize Botanic Gardens. As an intern interested in horticulture, I was placed with Rudy Aguilar in the nursery. I was responsible to help with whatever tasks he was scheduled to do that morning. This included repotting palms and coconuts, replacing and sealing the walkway boards at the garden entrance, relocating the nursery/gardener workstation, reorganizing the plants in the nursery, doing maintenance work in Zingiber Alley, adding soil and raising the plants in the Native Orchid House, and doing general garden and path upkeep. Most of my tasks in the afternoon were centered on making interpretive displays for the Visitor’s Center. The two main tasks I was given were to finish painting the Belizean home display and brainstorm and research ideas for a new educational seed display. I also spent some time researching information on native Costa Rican palms and painting news signs for the garden.